


something solid to last the night

by carloabay



Series: you’re no better [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, SHIELD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:22:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26162590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carloabay/pseuds/carloabay
Summary: Agent Maria Hill hunts the Black Widow. Unsuccessfully.
Relationships: Maria Hill/Natasha Romanov
Series: you’re no better [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2194239
Comments: 11
Kudos: 53





	something solid to last the night

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of inspired by Killing Eve. Just a lil bit less psychopathic.

Gone. As easily and silently as paper in the wind. Maria slammed her gun down on the bullet-ridden table and cursed harshly through her teeth.

"What's next?" May asked, dragging herself to her feet, clutching a weeping slash over her shoulder bone.

"She can't have gone far," Bobbi said. Maria fought not to smash a damn window in rage, and instead thrust her fingers cruelly through her own tangled hair.

"We can catch her," May groaned, staggering to the wall for something to hold her up. Bobbi grabbed her arm and looped it around her shoulder, and May shot her a grateful glance. Bit her lip as her wound stained her jacket darker.

"You're not going anywhere like that," Maria replied reluctantly.

"I can walk."

"Barely," Bobbi muttered, and May, this time, cast her an unintelligible look. Bobbi tightened a hand around May's hip in response. 

" _STRIKE Foxtrot, medical vehicles closing on your location. Out_ ," fizzed the comms in Maria's ear, crackling with unbearable feedback. She dug them out and switched her radio on instead, avoiding Bobbi's hard gaze.

"Copy," she said. "Agent May needs fast medical extraction. Blood loss and--"

"Hill," May said, wheezing through her teeth. "Don't shit on the mission, will you?" Maria let the radio fall to her side.

"You're compromised."

"You're not," May replied. "Neither's the Mockingbird."

"I'm not leaving," Bobbi said, petulantly, and May shrugged out from under her grip, forcefully, wincing, and staggered to a ruined chair, righted it and sat. She let out a long hiss of breath, waving Bobbi away as she moved to help.

"Like I said," May sighed, "don't shit on the mission." She glared, that famous ice-glance, right at Maria. "So?"

"Morse?" Maria asked, not taking her eyes off May. Every second, the Black Widow was fleeing, further and faster, and fading. Bobbi twisted one finger around the grip of her baton, switched her gaze from May to Maria and back. "She'll never forgive you if you stay," Maria offered, nodding to May. Bobbi snorted.

"Never?"

"Pushing your luck?" May panted. Bobbi bit her lip, eyeing the blood staining May's clothes: a dark patch spreading fast like a sickness. May raised an eyebrow effortlessly, and Bobbi looked away with a frustrated shake of her head.

"Alright. Where do we start?"

∆

The nightclub, like pretty much all nightclubs, was three things: sweaty, disorienting, and loud.

Maria flashed the bouncer her S.H.I.E.L.D badge and he let them through. He was thin-haired, his uniform a t-shirt and jeans. Low budget, inferred the neon sign, with two letters winked out and three others sizzling ominously.

The floor was sticky, the music jarring from one side of the room, and with every harsh flash of light, the glisten of sweat and blood on Bobbi's face creased around her focused frown.

"We've got Agent Thirteen as back-up, ETA five minutes," Maria called, over the heavy sound of the bass, and Bobbi nodded.

"You sure this is the place?"

"Eyes on the street said as much," Maria replied. Both of them eyed the place with trepidation as they moved further in, darkened bodies and heavy breaths guarding them on all sides.

"Trap?" Bobbi offered uneasily, and Maria slid her knife from her belt.

"You read my mind. Comms, channel three. Split left and right, let Carter take the middle when she gets here." The beat changed, faster, and someone near Maria's ear started yelling the words to the song.

"Roger that. Don't get killed."

"She doesn't want us dead," Maria said back, but Bobbi was gone already.

Maria nodded to herself and turned to her left, slipping easily through the crowd at some points, and at others, having to shoulder her way roughly through walls of bodies. Someone spilt their drink on her shoulder, strong-smelling alcohol, and moved on without an apology. 

The knife, lowered to hip-height, was dangerous in such close, unpredictable quarters, but it made Maria feel less naked against the woman she was hunting. The woman who was making her feel more and more like the prey with each passing second.

If that was a flash of tell-tale red hair in the shimmering lights, she wouldn't have been able to tell.

Maria stopped trying to wrangle her way through the dancing mass, finally having lost her bearings. The music had changed, short, sharp notes, and then a quick, pulsing beat. 

Maria scanned the faces nearest to her, grinning expressions flashing in and out of the light. Useless. She was exposed, utterly defenceless should Romanova decide to spring. She ground her teeth and gripped the knife a little harder and started to push her way through the crowd once more.

"Mockingbird? This is Neptune?" she asked, right into the radio, and there was a terrifying second of feedback before Bobbi spoke back.

" _Neptune, this is Mockingbird. Onto something_?"

"I was hoping you were," Maria replied, a momentary rush of relief flooding her veins. No one was dead yet.

" _Nope_ ," Bobbi said, popping the 'p'. " _Has Carter graced us with her presence yet_?"

"Not that I can see."

" _Alright. You out_?"

"No, stay on the line," Maria said, rushed. There was a surprised pause on Bobbi's end.

" _O-kay. What's wrong_?"

"I've got a feeling," Maria said, then cut herself off. She'd meant to say something about a trap and a herd of cattle, but her tongue hadn't let her. Someone stumbled against her shoulder and giggled, neon glasses searing right at her face. 

The music drowned out Bobbi's reply, and Maria frowned and shook the radio.

"What was that?"

" _Nothing. I hear you're up for a promotion, after this_?"

"Don't even go there," Maria growled. She'd been after the promotion for months: finally a senior position, but then Fury had slapped a sheet-thin file on her desk and sent her running off halfway across the world to find a woman who barely existed, with only the faintest taste of reward on her lips. 

" _We'd better get her, then_ ," Bobbi said warmly.

"Yeah," Maria said quietly. Then, "You and May, huh?" There was a noise on the other end of the radio that sounded suspiciously like a flustered cough, and Maria grinned, barely caring that they weren't using proper radio etiquette.

" _Not that I know of_ ," Bobbi replied, infuriatingly coy, and Maria groaned.

"Come on, Morse, it's more obvious than Trip and that Comms officer Prale."

" _It is not_ ," Bobbi replied, perfectly practiced at projecting indignancy down the radio.

"So you admit it?"

" _I didn't know you were one for gossip- Jesus Christ_!"

"What?" Maria said hurriedly, spinning on her heel in Bobbi's approximate direction. "What is it?" Excitement, adrenaline, fear, thrummed through her veins, because if they had her... But Bobbi's radio had fallen silent, and fear won out in the end. Maria shoved her way back through the crowd desperately, her fast feet mirroring the beat of the song, and then someone's hip thumped into her stomach and she fell, ass to the sticky floor.

The knife went clattering away, into the storm of feet. Maria lunged through the dark for it, but then a sharp foot came from nowhere, right into her side. Something cracked, spreading pain over her torso and Maria wheezed in agony, curling up around her knees, one hand still scrambling over the dirty floor for her knife.

Now _there_ was a flash of red hair: a semaphore in the shimmering club lights. The music thrummed beneath the floor and Maria struggled to roll, like an upturned turtle. The woman pressed a foot against Maria's hip and threw her onto her back once again, and then she moved in, Maria's knife in her hand, angled for the throat.

The pain flared once more as Maria launched herself up, dodging the knife and slamming her forehead into Romanova's nose. The world exploded in a show of stars and club lights and drums, and Romanova reeled back. Maria thumped back to the ground, and Romanova came in again, quick like a viper.

Fear curled in Maria's chest, real fear, terror of death by a Black Widow. She threw herself to one side with a yowl of pain and the knife lodged itself in the floor by her ear. Maria wasn't stupid. If Romanova wanted her dead, she'd be dead. The real question was, why was she playing?

"You've been chasing me, Maria," Romanova said over the music, stalking her down as Maria inched her way backwards across the floor. Maria didn't know whether to focus on the fact that Romanova knew her name, or the surprise of her voice: it wasn't smooth and pretty. Low and rough, more like. Maria wheezed, struggling to pull breath through her rattling, painful chest.

Heavy feet, stomping right by Maria's head, oblivious dancers, careless twenty-somethings. The Black Widow had green eyes, like slices of rock, and they pinned Maria mercilessly to the floor as she moved in again.

∆

Someone barrelled into her with a drunken laugh, slapping the radio from her hands.

"Jesus Christ-!" she snapped, lunging for it, but it fell to the ground and a heavy-heeled boot slammed into it with a miserable crunch. Bobbi swore, and the culprit danced away, his hands in the air, utterly uncaring. "Shit," she said softly.

“Trouble, Mockingbird?” came an amused voice from behind her elbow, and Sharon Carter emerged from the crowd, a head of golden waves roiling like a sunset sea in the flashing lights. Bobbi squinted at her.

“Nothing I can’t handle. You were supposed to take the middle.”

“I came to say that Hill’s cut off the comms,” Carter replied, raising her voice over squeals of excitement as a new song started. Bobbi frowned, a chill running down her spine.

“Let’s get to her, then. Number seven?”

“You got it.” And Carter disappeared into the dark mass once more, veering off to the right. Bobbi plunged through a group of dancers, her gaze slipping from one flash-masked face to the next without consequence. She circled around, right to the far wall, then along the back, the speakers thrumming painfully in her ears. Some breathless, sharp-beat song.

Carter was winding her way back through the crowd, and soon they’d cross paths and start on a tighter circle: it was slow going, and Hill could be in trouble, but the club was too crowded, moving too fast, and if they got swept in, they’d never find her.

Carter passed right by her, a fist extended, and Bobbi bumped her own knuckles briefly against Carter's. Then they started the rounds again.

∆

Romanova dropped to one knee, right by Maria's head, a dull thud in Maria's cotton-fluffed ears. The lights were swimming, music distorting like a horror film, sound scraping behind her eyes. Sharp, rasping pain in her lungs, her ribs.

Romanova leant down, through a haze of air, and a hot puff of blood slipped out of Maria's mouth. Dizzily, she could think: _Breathe slow. Don't move. Conserve energy and blood_.

None of it would matter if Romanova reached for that knife again. Their faces were inches apart, and Romanova was smiling, _grinning_. Maria let her eyes fall closed, took one shallow breath, and then heaved her body up, up through the air, through the air, through the air- no Romanova. 

She came down again, her eyelids red from the light of the room, head slamming into the floor, and then there was a knee in her hip and a hand around her throat and she was choking, gagging, thrashing like a fish on a deck.

Warmth, of another person, right by her ear.

"Quiet," Romanova hissed. Maria raised her hand, slammed it right into Romanova's side, throwing her hips up, twisting and bucking. Romanova grabbed her wrist and wrenched it, eliciting a bloodied moan from Maria's mouth. Romanova pinned it up above Maria's head, painfully stretched. "I said, quiet," she repeated, low into Maria's ear. She tilted her head, side to side, brilliant red in the white spotlight. "I just wanted to see you. I wanted-" a jerk, and yowl, and the weight on her hip was gone, and there was a crash of bodies on floors, the scream of panicked party-goers. 

Maria braced her elbow on the floor, pushed herself searingly painfully, trembling in every limb, to her knees. A tussle, up ahead of her, and she squinted through a haze, pain-induced sweat, and blood streaming down her throat.

A gunshot split the air and the crowd scattered, and a blonde wave of a head bobbed back and forth in Maria's dizzy vision as Romanova fought off the saviour. 

Something gave out in her leg muscles, or maybe it was the pain taking over; Sharon Carter was thrown backwards just as Maria blacked out, and the two of them slammed into the floor together.

∆

She was in medbay for four weeks. Punctured lung, broken ribs, concussion, bruised stomach. Someone sent her flowers: Barton sent her a mug with _Hawkeye_ splashed across it in garish purple letters. He proclaimed proudly that he'd made it himself. 

Between herself and no one else, Maria preferred the flowers.

She could see them from her bed, white and green; daisies and white tulips, said the nurse. Maria wasn't versed in flower language, so the second she was allowed to walk about the room, she crossed the floor in a few limping strides and searched through the petals for a note.

Wilted amongst the pruned stalks, white paper. 

_Sorry, baby_ , was all it said. There was a simple sad emoticon drawn tidily in one corner, and Maria growled and crumpled the note in her fist. The second she was back in the field, she _promised_ herself, she'd get the woman.

∆

The second Maria was back in the field was coincidentally ten minutes after Agent Barton captured the Black Widow. Maria, kitted up and ready to fly out on any mission the second she was ordered, stood back against a wall as STRIKE team Delta marched through the halls of S.H.I.E.L.D, an unmistakable tilt of a red head glinted past the helmets and tac gear, and through a gap, the Black Widow turned her head, and grinned at Maria with all her teeth.

∆

**One Year Later**

"Broken ribs have never stopped you before," Romanoff teased, brushing past Maria on her way to the coffee machine. A reel of anger, spun to its end, and a jump of excitement grew somewhere beneath Maria's diaphragm. "Besides, you got the promotion, didn't-"

"Fuck you," Maria snapped, and Romanoff stopped in her tracks. Spurred on, Maria didn't relent. "You think that's funny? You're willing to laugh about almost killing me, Romanoff?" Romanoff turned, ever so slowly, and those eyes, like slices of rock. Maria wanted to dodge them.

"What did you say?" she asked, quiet and soft.

"I said, fuck you," Maria growled, and she turned and left before she could lose her nerve.

∆

**Another Year Later**

"If you're looking for a punching bag, I haven't been used in a while." Maria paused in wrapping her hands, and glared at the floor instead. Her hair was sticking to the back of her neck, sweaty from the treadmill. Natasha hopped into the bench beside her. "Not since that nightclub." And she grinned. Maria barely refrained from slamming her against the wall and...

"Fuck off," she snapped, finishing the wrap and bouncing up from the seat, ready to thump a sandbag around. Ready to take damn Romanoff off her mind.

"Oo, not very friendly," Natasha teased, edging her words with a giggle. "Come on, Hill. I bet you're a better challenge than Barton."

"How about you try this out on May, and see how well that goes," Maria threw back, over her shoulder, adding a bite to the sentence. Natasha leapt off the bench and followed Maria to the punching bag, rolling and spinning on the balls of her feet.

"Come and fight, Hill," she called playfully, ducking under the rope of the ring. Maria passed by, ignoring her, and Natasha slumped dramatically over the ropes, pouting. Maria readied her stance, steadied the bag, and flung the first punch.

It hit air. The bag was gone. Maria stumbled forwards, over her own feet, right up to Romanoff, who was on her tiptoes, holding the bag above her head, bright eyed and smiling. Maria had that slip of excitement again, that spike of anger in a cool façade.

Fine. If she wanted a fight, she could have one. 

Maria swung, right for the jaw, a strong punch. Natasha ducked to the side and let the bag fall down, heavy and heading right for Maria's face. Maria went down, rolled backwards, the bag whistling past her nose, and then Natasha was on her like a monkey, agile and fast and very, very strong. Hands on her arm and shoulder, knee in her stomach. 

Maria launched herself upwards, slammed her head into Natasha's collarbone and rolled, taking Natasha with her and driving her knee into Natasha's side.

Natasha fingers inched in between her ribs, sharp and small, and Maria jerked, muscles loosening. Natasha kicked out, throwing Maria backwards, and then she was up on her feet, that grin on her face and Maria was exhausted. Exhausted and _angry_. 

At this tiny woman who thought she had any right to do this: to come into S.H.I.E.L.D like she'd always belonged here, to slip into Maria's life like they'd never tried to kill each other. Like neither had ever been the hunter or the prey. Like they'd never played a game of hide-and-seek on a weather-scarred rooftop, like there never had been blood in the snow or music and knives in a nightclub.

Maria rose to her feet. She took two steps forward, strong and purposeful, not settling into a stance. Natasha watched her carefully.

Like there never had been bullet holes in Natasha's stomach and Maria's hands on her skin, slathered in blood.

Like they'd never locked eyes across a room full of bullets and given each other the look. The _if we die today_ look. The _carry my body back_ look. It didn't matter that it _had_ happened, not to Natasha, anyway. Because she damn well liked to play pretend.

"We still fighting, Hill?"

Maria was right in front of her now. Inches away. Natasha was a little radiator all on her own, emanating warmth and danger, and Maria leant down and pushed her fingers through that semaphore red hair and kissed Natasha, and this, _this_ was what she had meant by _fuck you_.

**Author's Note:**

> nat/maria is my ship, but natsharon is also a power couple don't u agree
> 
> And GOD this took me ages lmao
> 
> White tulips means regret and forgiveness, so they're great for apologising ;) daisies can mean 'i'll never tell', so....


End file.
